This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
Footwear and other athletic equipment is generally designed with an emphasis on optimizing performance without increasing the overall weight of the footwear or equipment beyond a threshold amount. For example, increasing a specific stiffness and durability of a footwear plate generally results in an increase in weight due to the additional materials required to provide the increased stiffness. Conversely, reducing the weight of the footwear generally requires reducing the materials used to form the footwear plate, thereby sacrificing the strength of the plate. In order to meet the need to increase strength and durability of footwear plates, while at the same time reducing the weight thereof, the foregoing drawbacks can be overcome using composite materials exhibiting high strength-to-weight ratios to form the footwear plate.
Generally, composite footwear plates are formed from unidirectional tapes or plates only capable of offering stiffness and load path properties that are unidirectional. While a unidirectional stiffness and load path may be suitable in one region of footwear, the same unidirectional stiffness and load path may not be suitable in other regions of the footwear. Moreover, composite footwear plates are typically formed from a substantially rigid, flat preform with a uniform thickness that is difficult to shape into a three-dimensional (e.g., non-flat) shape having a variable thickness. Accordingly, composite footwear plates are generally limited to flat surface profiles with a uniform thickness that do not conform to the surface profiles of the bottom surface of a foot. In view of the foregoing drawbacks of unidirectional tapes or plates used in the formation of composite footwear plates, such composite plates are usually only incorporated into one portion of the footwear, (e.g., one of the heel region and the forefoot region). As such, conventional footwear plates do not afford maximum support in both the heel region and the mid-foot region of the footwear and, further, cannot be tailored for the particular region of the footwear.
Corresponding reference numerals indicate corresponding parts throughout the drawings.